


Statement of Stella Preuß

by sashawiremarryme



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: cw death, cw the vast, cw violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashawiremarryme/pseuds/sashawiremarryme
Summary: A series of flights and falls
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Statement of Stella Preuß

**Author's Note:**

> *chanting* price's statement! price's statement!
> 
> (if you didn't come here from twitter then hi! this is based of a twitter rp character)

[Click.]

Statement of Stella Preuß regarding… a series of flights and falls. Statement taken direct from subject, 26th of August, 2020. Statement begins.

The first time I went on a plane I was twelve years old. I was born in Australia but me and my mum moved to the UK when my mum, Riley Preuss, got a job in Glasgow. That was the first time I was in the air and I loved it. I’d always loved the sky but looking at it and actually being in it are very different things. I remember there were three flights and my mum always gave me the window seat. The first two were Melbourne to Singapore and Singapore to London. That’s nearly a day straight of flying but it went quickly. I must have spent the whole time just staring out the window. I didn’t sleep and only ate to stop my mum from annoying me and ruining my peace. The rest of the time I was just looking out the window, imagining what it would be like to be out there—not out on the wing, out in the sky.

The third flight was much shorter, about an hour or two. I was disappointed because I wouldn’t be in the sky for long but it was better than nothing. There was a screw-up with the airline. Me and my mum ended up in different rows. I was also stuck in an aisle seat. The woman next to me was completely terrified of flying. Even before takeoff she was shaking and rocking and whispering to herself. I was pissed. This would be my last flight in who knows how long and I couldn’t enjoy it because I was stuck next to some lady that just wouldn’t shut up. 

[Price chuckles]

God, I was such a brat back then.

It only got louder after we took off and all I could do was stare into space and try to ignore her. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how she reacted when we hit turbulence. I’d never felt turbulence like that before, and I wanted to enjoy it. I was worried because I thought her crying would mean that I wouldn’t really be able to enjoy it, but honestly, I think it made it better. The fact that she was so scared and I wasn’t. It made the sky feel more special because clearly everyone else couldn’t enjoy the way I could.

I’m not sure how long it was, but eventually, the emergency exit door of the plane started rattling. As I sat there, watching it, it blew off. I looked around, and no-one else seemed to react to it. Even though the seatbelt light was still on, I wanted a closer look.

I got out of my seat and walked towards it. I could feel the wind around me as the air in the plane rushed outside, sucking everything that wasn’t nailed down through the open door. But it didn’t affect me. I could walk towards the door without being sucked through it, and I could breathe just fine. I stood before the door and reached out. I was so close to the outside, to the sky. Right before my hand passed through the open doorway I felt someone grab my shoulder and turn me around.

Just like that, the wind stopped, the noise stopped, and the door was there again. The flight attendant had grabbed me. He said that I had ran out of my seat and was trying to open the emergency exit. I was scared of being in trouble and, luckily for me, he interpreted that as me being scared of the turbulence. They ended up giving my seat to some old man that looked pretty happy to be sitting next to that terrified woman. It was amazing how quickly the crew managed to seat me next to my mum after that, even though they were very clear that there was nothing they could do when we first asked them to move us. I also ended up getting a window seat for the last bit of the flight, which was fine by me.

It was a long time before I got to go into the sky again. Even when we moved to London a year later, we took the train. It wasn’t until I graduated high school that I finally got the chance. There’s a bit of a tradition in Australia for people who finish high school. They go away with all of our friends and spend a week or so getting drunk. Yeah, I know. Well, I figured that even though I’d been living in the UK for the past six years, I was still Australian, so I was still gonna do it. I talked to my friends and we saved up and ended up going to Barcelona for two weeks.

Almost immediately after the plane took off the turbulence started. I loved it. I secretly hoped that the same thing would happen as last time. It didn’t, but I wasn’t too upset. At least I got to fly again. The same thing happened on the way back. At this point, I brushed the entire spooky plane thing off as a kid's imagination.

A year later, me and my mum had to go back to Australia when a family member got sick. Again, every single flight on the way there and back had constant turbulence. I… haven’t been on a plane since then. I don’t know if that still happens to me anymore.

A few months ago, my mum moved back to Australia. I didn’t go with her. I’d just gotten my undergraduate degree in civil engineering and I had a job at a firm lined up. Not to mention all of my friends were here.

Living without her for the first time was… stressful. It was hard to not have her around as a safety net, or a support if I needed it. But I managed.

I ended in moving in with a friend, Jason Moore, and my qpp, queer platonic partner, Emil Robinson, and things were good for a bit. My job was boring as hell. It was one of those jobs that really doesn’t need a degree but they ask for one anyway just so they can gatekeep against poor people. It was basically just stapling. But I wanted to have some savings before I started my Master’s, and it was something that I could put on a resume.

The firm was working on a bridge at the time. Bridges were always my favourite back at school, I just like the idea that the only thing stopping you from falling is a relatively flimsy span of concrete and steel. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to visit the construction site when they needed some of us to head out there.

One of the other guys who went with us was a man called Archer Crane. We were two of only three recent graduates that worked there, so we were a bit… competitive. I suspect he only came along because I was going. So I guess what happened to him is kinda my fault. 

It was dark when it happened. We’d been there a few hours at this point. There wasn’t much for us to do so the two of us were just standing around trying to look busy when we heard a loud thud above us. We looked up to see… I don’t really know how to describe it. Something had landed on the bridge supports above us. It looked a bit like a person, if a person had twelve-foot-long limbs. It looked pale, almost pure white. I don’t know if that was because of the bright lights on the bridge or if it was really that pale. It was so thin that you could clearly see the outline of its bones. Nobody moved for a few seconds, Archer and I just stood there staring and it looked right back at us. It felt like it was staring into my soul. Then I heard music. It was a violin, playing a single, high-pitched note. It made me angry. I wanted to hurt someone. And the only person near me was Archer.

I guess the music must have been doing the same thing to him because before I got the chance to turn around I felt something hit me in the back of the head. I fell to the ground and looked up to see Archer standing over me, holding a wrench. He hit me so hard I swear I could feel my brain bouncing around in my skull. I raised my hand to the back of my head and there was a dent in my skull. It cleared the anger though. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore, I just didn’t want to be beaten to death. 

He swung at me again but I managed to grab the wrench and throw him off his balance. I got up and tried to run but my head was still spinning. Just the act of standing up was nearly enough to make me throw up. Luckily, I was standing next to the edge of the bridge and managed to grab the safety railing before I fell over. There was no chance of running though. I tried to yell for help but as soon as I opened my mouth I started to feel sick again.

I could see Archer getting up out of the corner of my eye. I knew if he caught me he was going to kill me, and it would probably be extremely painful to be beaten to death. That wasn’t not really how I wanted to die.

I looked over the edge of the bridge, I saw an empty black void that the lights on the bridge couldn’t penetrate. I realised that if I was going to die, I would rather die in there. So I jumped.

I should have been falling for just a few seconds. I know what the distance between the bridge and the water was, and I know how fast things fall. It should have only been a few seconds.

Instead, it must have been hours. I just kept falling through the pitch black, waiting to hit the water. At that speed, the impact would have almost definitely killed me and if it didn’t… I wouldn’t exactly be up to swimming to shore. But nothing happened. After about a minute or so I started to wonder if I had hit the water and died before I registered the impact. Maybe this is just what happens to you after you die?

Eventually, I must have fallen asleep. I know that sounds ridiculous but it was late, I’d had a long day, and I hadn’t really been sleeping that well. The water woke me up. It was so cold. The ‘knocks the breath out of you’ kind of cold. I swam to the surface and gasped for air. It took a few seconds of treading water to realise that the fall didn’t kill me, it didn’t injure me at all. Trust me when I say, that should not have been possible. You don’t escape a fall like that unharmed.

Anyway, I swam to shore and ended up walking to the hospital. Made up some story about exploring the riverbanks and slipping and hitting my head to explain the injury and why I was soaking wet. Turned out I also managed to get hypothermia which was a fun little bonus for me.

I don’t remember how long they kept me there. The injury wasn’t there anymore, but all of my tests were coming back… weird. They thought I had some new type of brain injury. I thought about what happened a lot in that time. I had hoped that the thing might have been some sort of dream or hallucination made up by my injured brain, but I checked later, Archer is dead. You know how when you’re a kid your parents say stuff like “if Stella jumped off a bridge would you?” I guess he must’ve answered yes to that since he apparently jumped off after me. They found his body in the river. Well, they found a mess of flesh that used to be his body.

Eventually, I left. Whatever was wrong with my brain clearly wasn’t causing me any issues, and I wasn’t going to let some overly curious doctor poke around in my head just so they could write an obscure research paper on it. I went back to work. My coworkers said they were happy to see that I was okay, they all played the part of the concerned friend but… they avoided me. I think they could tell that something wasn’t right with what happened. None of them would spend more than a few minutes with me, let alone be alone with me. None of them bothered to tell me when Archer’s funeral was. 

But life went on. My partner, Emil, supported me through it all. I don’t think I could’ve made it through it without him. Not too long after that incident, the two of us went on a trip. We went hiking a lot, and he thought it might be a good thing to get my mind off of what happened. The hike was meant to take two and a half days so we left early on Friday. I wasn’t feeling well when we left, but I ignored it, thinking it would go away at some point over the weekend.

Late Saturday afternoon, we were nearly at the second campsite. I really wasn’t feeling well at this point. But, between us and the campsite was a gorge, and a very narrow bridge. He went first. If you could look down, you could see through the bottom of the bridge. It terrified Emil. He was never a fan of heights. I could feel his fear. For the first time in days, I felt relief.

If you’ve never felt that Hunger before, then I don’t know how to describe it to you. It starts small, manageable. But soon it’s unbearable. It takes over everything. You can’t ignore it. At the time, I didn’t recognise what it was. I thought I was just unwell. It wasn’t until I felt his fear, that I began to understand what it was.

It sounds insane when I say it out loud, but at the time it all made sense in my head. His fear was giving me relief. If I made him afraid, it would stop. I /had/ to make him afraid.

I grabbed him, and then I pushed him over the railings. He wasn’t meant to fall. He was just meant to go partially over the railing. Just his top half. He would be scared, and then it would be over.

I misjudged. Pushed too hard.

The walk back to civilisation was the loneliest day of my life.

Every time I tell someone what happened they say it wasn’t my fault. Even if they don’t know the full story, they just tell me that I can’t blame myself. I don’t know if that’s true. Or if I believe it. It’s easy to blame all of this on the Entities, the Vast, but I don’t know if I can do that. I killed the only person I’ve ever truly cared about. I don’t deserve to live without carrying the guilt of that.

Statement ends.

[Click.]


End file.
